To ensure our research computing platforms remain secure and stable, we are establishing a regular weekly maintenance and update window starting from Tuesday 3 November. Moving to a predictable schedule allows our systems team to apply essential patches regularly. This reduces the need for short-notice, emergency interventions. What is changing? An at-risk maintenance window will … Continue reading “Introducing a weekly maintenance and security update window”
Category: BEAR Service
We’ve moved to SharePoint!
We’re pleased to announce that the Advanced Research Computing team webpages have moved to a new SharePoint site, available to University staff and PostGraduate Researchers (PGRs). Moving to SharePoint has given us a great opportunity to review and streamline our content. As a team, we’ve worked together to make information easier to find, reduce duplication … Continue reading “We’ve moved to SharePoint!”
BEAR infrastructure improvements in 2026
During 2026, there has been major work undertaken on the majority of the BEAR services provided by Advanced Research Computing, which has kept the Architecture, Infrastructure and Systems Group very busy! We understand the past year may have been a frustrating time for BEAR users due to more downtime than usual, but we hope you … Continue reading “BEAR infrastructure improvements in 2026”
Understanding recent BlueBEAR service disruptions – July 2026
Over the past few months, BlueBEAR users may have experienced periods of reduced service availability, planned maintenance, and interruptions to normal operations. We recognise that these disruptions can be frustrating, particularly when research projects depend on reliable access to High Performance Computing (HPC) resources. This blog post explains the factors behind recent outages and outlines … Continue reading “Understanding recent BlueBEAR service disruptions – July 2026”
May 2026 BEAR Newsletter
Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Newsletter Members of the team attended a great BEAR PGR Conference at the end of April on the theme of AI, research integrity and ethics. There were some really thought-provoking talks on the implications of AI and some interesting examples of PhD research from across the university. The event was organised … Continue reading “May 2026 BEAR Newsletter”
GPU and BEAR Portal changes
Dear BlueBEAR users, We have taken feedback from our user base regarding the time it takes for GPU jobs to start and have made changes with the aim of getting your jobs to start quicker. The changes we have made are as below: Our reasoning in making these changes are: BEAR Portal is intended for … Continue reading “GPU and BEAR Portal changes”
Research project: Exploring Julia for High-Performance Computing
This project was initiated and led by Dr Vincenzo Brachetta and carried out by PhD researcher Ritesh Moon at the University of Birmingham. Conducted between January and February 2026, it evaluated the performance and practical usability of Julia on BlueBEAR, the University’s institutional high-performance computing (HPC) platform. BlueBEAR supports multi-core CPU workloads, distributed execution across nodes, and GPU-accelerated computation, with … Continue reading “Research project: Exploring Julia for High-Performance Computing”
Understanding multi-agent learning through large-scale simulations
In this case study we hear from Tuo Zhang, a researcher working in Machine Learning, who has been using BlueBEAR to run large-scale simulations of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms. His research focuses on understanding how learning agents behave when interacting with each other in complex and changing environments. In many real-world systems, decision-making is not performed … Continue reading “Understanding multi-agent learning through large-scale simulations”
Update – 2024 IT Needs of Active Research survey progress
It has been nearly two years since the last Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research (PVC-R) ‘IT Needs of Active Research Survey’ was released, and as we prepare for the next survey, we wanted to update you on some actions that IT Services has taken since we analysed the results of the 2024 survey. You can find … Continue reading “Update – 2024 IT Needs of Active Research survey progress”
Cooling works in data centre – upcoming service disruption
Update – 16:17 on Friday 17 April, 2026 The cleaning of the cooling system is now complete. The effort required to get all the parties involved was a mammoth task which was admirably managed by our AIS (systems teams). The maintenance was essential to ensure optimal performance and longevity of equipment. Particularly given the imminent … Continue reading “Cooling works in data centre – upcoming service disruption”